Iām tempted to dig into this and maybe share what I find, if any useful. Marketing costs could be low with a huge following, but I donāt know what I donāt know.
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Iām more than happy to provide any guidance Freetrade would like to ask of me. 
Stephens guide to running a business (follow at your own risk)
Rule #1 focus on your product/service/offering
Rule #2 make people aware of your product/service/offering
Rule #3 get it out to market
Rule #4 donāt try to be what youāre not
Rule #5 spend the money where it is needed not where your pet interest is (i.e. No Sugru you donāt need the latest in server technology and ERP software that costs Ā£500,000+ just use a damn spreadsheet for now)
Rule #6 make your business scalable
Rule #7 make your community richer!
I personally like rule #7
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Did they really spend Ā£500k on ERP? Even without context, that sounds like a poor decision to me.
This article is trying to say that Sugru āalmost crowdfunded itself to deathā, whatever that means.
To me itās hard to see how crowdfunding was an issue here, as it sounds like an execution issue. Not different from most of these extremely costly VC-funded startup failures.
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Thereās talk about misleading claims and poor due diligence on
Not sure whether itās enough evidence for those claims.
Good to see the product live on but feel bad for the investors, last fundraise was last year or something.
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I feel bad for the hard working staff, after all their effort and years of work their options are worth Ā£0 - the selling price was below the option threshold and so they get nothing.
Some members of staff even took salary cuts so they could have more options, they lost out twice. 
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I didnāt know that. The lack of transparency is another thing Iāve noticed as well as CrowdCube and Sugru spinning this as a success, when itās clearly not.
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If I remember correctly, they mentioned implementing SAP Business One in one of their updates.
When did that happen?
Based off what the email they sent out said, I saw a snippet, it said something to the effect of the company has been sold to one of the worlds leading etc with the difficult news is the low priceā¦
Additionally there was some Tweets which also lent more towards itās good news.
I get that in some ways itās good news, the product lives on, investors got some money back. However, overall the whole way it played out has poor optics and Iām saying that as someone who has committed a good chunk of money in startups on CrowdCube, including in Crowdcube itself.
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